Design Validation for Industrial Piping with AutoCAD Plant 3D

DAVID WOLFE: Hello, my name is David Wolfe. Today, we'll be going through design validation for industrial piping with AutoCAD Plant 3D. My co-presenter is Corey St. Jacques. And we're going to take you through a product overview for Plant Vision.

One of the issues that's troubled us throughout or troubled me throughout my career has been how much time we spent as designers doing a manual review of paper documents or PDF files. So for example, early on in my career, I'd sit down with the set of P&ID's As we're doing pipe routing and we went through and highlight the P&ID, when we got to a line, we'd highlight it when we put a valve in to match the model. And then we'd keep highlighting every time we placed the new item in the model.

And then over the course of the next week or so, there would be revisions made. And new P&ID's would come out. And so we'd have to transfer our changes and our markups over to that new set and go through the process again as we reviewed our line to see what changes we need to incorporate.

That happened on a weekly basis. When it came time for releases or issuing new packages, we'd have to go through the process again. Likewise, as designers in the piping industry, we also get information from instrument groups, electrical groups, and mechanical groups. And many times, those will come in the form of equipment list or instrument lists.

And so part of our process of reconciling that information is going through getting a printout of an Excel spreadsheet, get one from the mechanical group, and print out a list of equipment from our P&ID's and then go through the process of highlighting and marking up the changes or the differences. And so this happens on a routine basis. And it costs a lot of time.

We also have the problem where we just have to consolidate tags. And so making sure that the instrument group has all the same tags that I do, making sure that they're actually input correctly and that there's no typos. So there's a lot of cost in waste and the practice of validating your P&ID's, your equipment lists, your instrument lists, and your models. So that's the big problem that we want to address with Plant Vision today.

So there's a couple ideas that are incorporated into the Plant Vision product. And at the end of the day, we have a couple of goals. We want to shorten our design timelines and identify project risks. So the first step is introducing this concept of continuous validation.

So when it's a manual process, like on a weekly basis or bi-weekly or monthly basis going through and highlighting things in Excel spreadsheets or correlating the two lists, we can't bear the burden of doing that on a regular basis. But when we start using automation, then the validation process happens naturally over the course of a few times a day, maybe once an hour, depending on how ambitious you are.

But the point is that this process can happen behind the scenes without any user input. And so that enables designers to resolve these issues before they make it to the revision date or before they even make it to the end of the week so that their entire design process becomes validated just by the actions of routing the pipe and placing the valves and items in the model.

Second, let's think through what happens if we're doing this continuous validation process over the course of a project. So the first set of project uploads that we do is going to be a set of entities. Let's say that there's a tank, TK-1001.

Now, I understand that a lot of companies don't always do the P90 design first even though technically, that's still proper workflow. Sometimes people jump in and start modeling right away, and that's fine. But in either scenario, whether you do your P&ID's first, your model first, you have a single source of information that has not showed up in the other source.

And as we upload a project, let's say our first project uploads includes TK-1001. And we see that in a list of things that need to be validated. The next day, maybe a designer picks up that tank and that P&ID and start modeling around that tank and putting a pump in.

And so he puts the tank in the pump in his model. And so our validation when it runs, it would see that now, there are two items-- two TK-1001's-- one on the P&ID and one in the model. And then it also notice an additional pump in the model.

Well, as far as our schedule goes, now, that tank is closer to being completely validated. Now, in most cases, there's a difference in nozzles that has to be worked through. Maybe there is a difference in insulation on the tank. There's maybe the design pressures and temperatures that aren't quite captured yet.

But if you can take this and just extrapolate, we can start to identify when that tank is ready to be released based on the validation process and for when we can identify that it has been completely validated. So at the end of the project, everything should pass all of our validation checks. And so that lets us start to identify our project risks.

So if I have a vessel that has, let's say, 20 nozzles, and I see that get placed on the P&ID early, then I can know when it comes to my validation checklist, if that's going to be a longer, more complex item. And so that's going to be my risk that I need to manage as the project manager.

And so that means that I'm going to prioritize getting vendor drawings. I'm going to prioritize any revisions that my team makes to, let's say, nozzle placement because the more smoothly I make that one vessel execute, the shorter timeline I have because it's not going to make everything else wait on it or the project wait on it. And so those are some of the big values that we see coming out of this Plant Vision product for continuous validation and getting more schedule clarity.

So let's walk through six features of our Plant Vision product. The first is the validation checklist. Then we're going to walk through property validation. We have a palette of related documents. There's universal search, design progress, and all wrapped into a nice 2D and 3D viewer.

So let's talk about the validation checklist first. So the validation checklist is going to be a list of our tags. So we basically build a tag registry in the background. And as part of that, we'll be able to search and filter and find items and locate where they are in different drawings and models.

The property validation is going to be a panel that enables users to easily find where things are that do not validate or pass our rule checks or a violation checks. And so by highlighting them and making them easily identifiable, the user doesn't have to scroll through a long list of items. They can jump right through it.

Related documents. Probably one of the most tedious parts of being a piping designer is the review process of trying to coordinate your 2D drawings, your isometrics, your model, and your P&ID. The related documents is going to provide a quick way to access all of these documents in one place so that you can get to any one of those sources within two clicks.

We also, as designers are going to be well aware of the problem of finding stuff, finding tagged items. And so the universal search is going to play a key role in letting you navigate not just jumping to drawings, but finding related things like what line is related-- what lines are related to TK-1003. And they will easily service in the universal search panel.

As mentioned earlier based on the validation process now, we can extrapolate a design timeline and help provide guidance on when we think things will be completed. And so as designers are routing and placing pipes in the models, we're going to build a design score and identify how quickly they're working through the design score. And that's what we'll use our extrapolation for our schedule on.

And last of all, the last feature we'd like to highlight is the 2D and 3D viewer. So this is a very fast, high-performance viewer that will load your whole model together into one environment and make it easy to navigate and find things in a 3D model.

Let's jump over to Corey to take a look at Plant Vision.

COREY ST JACQUES: Thank you, David. So as David was talking about, our six features, I'll be demoing this for you today. The first item on the list is the validation checklist. Now, what's nifty about this little checklist on the top left corner of the screen is the fact that you can search any tag you like.

Here, I just search for a TK. And this search will produce a result of all the TK tags in your project. What's also neat about this is that I can click on each row and highlight the elements in 3D. Just like David was saying, it only takes one or two clicks to get to where you need to go.

And you'll notice a few tabs at the top here. We have Properties, Design Score, and Conflicts. We'll be looking at the properties. In the Properties tab, you'll notice that are three violations. Now, what does that mean? Well, here, you can see that there is a property mismatch violation on TK-1004.

This means that your tag exists in 3D and a 2D drawing whether it's iso, ortho. However, the properties do not match. The values do not match. And this will produce a property mismatch violation. And you'll see all of these listed here.

Next tab is a Design Score. What's neat about the design score is that this tells you exactly the progress of your current tag. The number is calculated depending on how many drawings you have, the type of object that is. Here we have TK-1004, which is of course, clickable. And you'll see it has a total of eight.

You can see more details on that design score at the top here for a further breakdown. You can also view the progress. Have I created the ortho for this drawing? Is it related to a P&ID? Is it related to a 3D object? Yes or no? And this would give you a percentage of completion. And you can see the whole list here down further down.

Next, we have the Conflicts tab. This gives you a more broad perspective of all of your conflicts within the project. Here, we just have property mismatches, which is just a compiled list of all your violations.

Next, we'll be looking at the property validation. One of my favorite things about the properties, which is down here in the bottom left, is that if there is a violation, it will be highlighted in red. So you could quickly see if there is an issue with your tag or your object is highlighted right here.

Also, we do have a Line Group tab. This will show you all of the Line groups that are associated to the tag as well as the validation. Validation tab will show you the exact error that we had in the Properties panel over here. That was highlighted in red.

Next, we'll be looking at the related documents. As David was saying, this is absolutely one of the best features in my opinion, the fact that we're able to visualize all of the drawings that are associated to a tag in one place. You could navigate anywhere in 3D, select an object. And you could quickly identify where is this object also related to?

You could see here that this TKN-1002 is related to a 3D model and a P&ID. And of course, these are all clickable. If I click on the drawing, it will actually load up that drawing. It will highlight that element in 2D space. And this is a 2D viewer that works very similarly to the 3D view, whereas all the objects are dynamic. They're intelligent. They have metadata associated with them, and they are clickable.

So if I wanted to go from a 2D drawing to a 3D drawing, you could see here if I select this object, E-1004, that I can easily click on that and highlight it in 3D, one of my favorite features.

Next, the universal search. Universal search is located right at the top of the header. And you can search any tag you like. I'll search TK-1002. And it will produce a list of all the information you would need on a broad level for this tag.

For example, whereas in 3D, I could click on it here, the associated line groups. As you can see, there are a lot of line groups connected to this object, which is listed here, as well as the P&ID and violations. Universal search allows you to quickly identify issues with a specific tag.

Next, we'll be looking at the design timeline. How do we know the progress of our project? Is it near completion? What is the date, expected date? That could be accessed through the Site Management tab. And accessing the project will bring you to a dashboard.

At the dashboard, if you scroll down a little bit, you'll see the design timeline. This produces a list of all of the tags that are associated to your project along with an expected completion date.

The date of completion is calculated by the design score. The more complex an object is, the higher the design score. And if you are able to identify how many points a tag is, then you can essentially identify how long it will take to complete that object, which you can see here, there are quite a few.

You'll notice that all of these tags are created on the same date. So they will have different design score values, which will give you a expected end date, which is what the design timeline is supposed to identify. Also, has other features of printing to PDF, which is located on the dashboard. It's just an overall view of your entire project.

Now, back to the 3D and 2D. I would say that one of the neatest features is just the ability to navigate through your entire project. This is a combination of all your DWG files from Plant 3D. They're combined here in one fell swoop. I could click on Objects, highlight Objects, hover over Objects and quickly navigate to any drawing with efficiency as you could see here. So clicking on this tank will bring me to an ortho and bring me right to that object.

So that concludes our Plant Vision demo. I will pass it on to David again for the conclusion.

DAVID WOLFE: So let's talk to how your Plant 3D project can get uploaded to this website or Plant Vision.

So the first component you need is a Plant 3D model. So we're going to represent that with some simple graphics. So this can live currently as a SQLite project. Or you could have it as a SQL server project in your local network.

We're looking to support projects on ACC in the near future. Once you have your product selected, you'll use our uploading application. It's a Plant Vision app that installs on a desktop. So this could be your own workstation, a user's workstation.

But typically, we'd identify like a job processor type machine. Maybe it's a virtual machine that has access to your files or just an old desktop. And that application would run. And it have to be able to point at your project.

And then on a scheduled basis, you'd be able to define what you want uploaded. So you can pick the project and then pick additional files that need to be carried with it. And then based on that schedule, that application will run through and upload it to the website. That gives us a cloud-enabled way to review your project without having to tie up Plant 3D licenses and enables other people that are nondesigners to have access to the same rich data that's in a Plant 3D project.

Next, so that's part of that publishing process that's going to go up to the cloud. Plant Vision is built on AWS. So it is extremely secure. We're using several different services, like EC2, S3, incognito, to control the login process and make sure that only users who are authenticated appropriately can have access to your projects. We also use a team-based and role-based permissions so that it's very easy for administrators to control who has access in a group format and have a very-- and they're very easily able to manage user rights to projects insights.

And then finally, after that processing is complete, then your project will be available via browser. And so anyone at any machine who has access to your project will be able to view that in a browser. So that lets them see things like the properties, all the metadata behind the Plant 3D objects.

One of the unique things to Plant Vision is the line group concept. Because we are pipers, we understand that line groups are the key way that people interact with piping on a model. And so like Corey was showing the demo, that line group properties list will make it a lot easier for designers and nondesigners to review line group information, like service spec, insulation, and heat tracing.

And it becomes very valuable because typically what we see on projects is the number one access file on any Plant Design project is usually the line list because that controls statuses, information between about fabrication, whether it's been installed, what parts are on site. And so being able to provide insight into that document and into that structure gives user a much deeper level of clarity into the project activity.

So what's on the roadmap? So there's been a lot of things discussed. This is a new product. We're very excited about it. But we'd like to cover a few of the things that are going to come up in the near future. So obviously, a design score is a new concept. And we're going to be working that in and fine-tuning it. And we hope to make it customizable so that you can jump in and develop your own unique algorithm that's specific to your company about what a good design score means.

But first of all, one of the first things we want to hit is pulling this information back into Plant 3D. So imagine being inside a Plant 3D. You can open up your validation checklist, click on an item, place it. And then that automatically takes care of the validation for you. So you don't have to fill in any properties anymore. They're just sucked right in. And that saves you a lot of picks and clicks as a user.

One of our customers estimated they spend 30% to 40% of their projects typing in data that's already entered somewhere else. So any time that we can save you from typing is going to be a key in getting your project out the door quicker and with more accuracy. So we're really excited about this validation checklist inside of Plant 3D.

Obviously, we're going to put some time in for the final testing before this goes full release. So that will be targeted for October 22 around that area. And then we're going to start doing things at a platform level, like integrating Revit models. But also, letting people push data back to Plant 3D.

So let's say that you're a project manager and someone, a contractor, lets you know that a certain line was installed. Wouldn't you like to be able to say change the status of the line from a web browser and have that impact your design model? And so we'll be looking to identify proper workflows that are validated and vetted so that other people can interact with the data around Plant 3D without jeopardizing the design information.

We also want to make the related documents library more robust. So imagine linking manufacturing information or maintenance manuals into the related documents library and so that those documents are automatically loaded in. So if you have a Goulds pump, and it has a specific model number, it automatically links to that operations manual so that you don't have to go through and maintain all those links. They're just built for you.

And then your-- as the installation or as the startup processes kick off, all that information is at your team's fingertips. So we have a lot of other features on the roadmap. We're very excited about the product, and we're looking forward to seeing people improve their validation process with Plant 3D.

Thanks for your time. I hope you have an excellent Autodesk University.